CBS
Finally, after that long dry spell to follow her sharing train cookies with Lily, we get some mileage out of Cristin Milioti. It's post-narrative flash-forward mileage, but at least it's something.
The well has run dry on character development for Ted. At this point, all he is is... waiting. Waiting to believe in love again (or does he believe in it wholeheartedly this week? It kind of ebbs and flows with whatever the episode calls for), and waiting for that love to come his way. Now that we have a face attached to the intangible idea of "the Mother," we can get a little bit more excited about his melodramatic groans. But even more exciting than whatshername's meeting with Ted is her meeting with everyone else. We know, thanks to extra-curricular research, that she'll meet every other member of the group prior to Teddy Westside. Her initial encounter with Lily was fine at best, but Lily's the "sane" one. Milioti coming into contact with Barney, Marshall, and Robin (probably in that chronological order, if we want to think about this stream with accelerating significance) is bound to be a lot of laughs.
And speaking of the rest of the troupe, "Lighthouse" deals with moreover interesting material involving longstanding psychological problems. More prominently, we have Robin, whose parental traumas are so deeply rooted that the mere mention of her mother — before even the Future Ted interjection spelling out just how weird a phenomenon this is — feels like a weird phenomenon. For the past few weeks, Robin has been feuding with Barney's mom Loretta, and tosses a jab her way in regards to her world famous scrambled eggs, asserting that her own mother makes better eggs.
Just as the inception of the Robin-Loretta warfare might have proved an appropriate venue to really dig into Miss Scherbatsky's piercing mommy/daddy issues, "Lighthouse" presents the opportunity and snatches it away from us. Robin's mother, at the very last minute, phones her daughter to reveal that she won't be at the wedding. The show uses the canon of Robin's mom being afraid to fly as the reason, although this does seem like a cop-out. There are plenty of Scherbatsky fissues to offer a more substantial, more painful reason for Robin's mom not making it to the ceremony. But instead of treating this as a window into Robin's festering pains, the show just uses it to bridge the gap between Robin and Loretta, the latter kicking on her maternal instincts to comfort her new daughter-in-law in her time of need.
But there is one piece of noteworthy character development in this episode, and not a particularly favorable one: at the behest of Daphne, Marshall drops his longstanding "nice guy" identity, stranding Ted's step-father Clint (who hitched a ride with the two of them after Marshall and Daphne stopped at Ted's mom's house in Cleveland to grab a meal and an embarrassing childhood picture of Ted) in the woods and seizing control of the trip. Now, we've often commended Marshall as being the only halfway decent human being among the troupe. But if Daphne's words really got through to him, if he's really now the sort of a**hole who would abandon a family friend in the middle of nowhere without so much as a warning, then we might have to bid adieu to the last speck of humanity in this show.
At least we got a callback to the "I Wanna Be" gag though, which, while predictable, was quite funny.
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AMC
In lieu of our weekly recap of The Walking Dead, we find it more appropriate after "Indifference" to hone in on the thematic epicenter of the episode, and our favorite character on the AMC horror-drama: Carol Peletier. Played with expert temperance by Melissa McBride, Carol has ascended (far beyond the constraints of her comic book source material) from the platform of consistently silent background camper to one of the series' most dynamic heroes... and, after these past two weeks, villains. Yes, we can't sign off on Carol's decision to murder Karen and David, although we can qualify her utilitarian intentions as "for the good of the people" — it's that "needs of the individual vs. needs of the group" debate coursing so deliberately through this program that leads to Carol's ultimate banishment from the prison this week, courtesy of a tearful, shattered Rick.
In case you're reading this without having watched the episode, Carol doesn't die. I know it might seem odd to pen a tribute to a character who is still very much alive, very likely indeed to maintain a presence on The Walking Dead. But Carol's fate is somehow more tragic than death, at least for a character like hers. When we met Carol, she was unique among the group as no stranger to torture. Having endured the wrath of her violent, alcoholic husband Ed — who took his anger and sexual frustration out on their daughter Sophia as well — for so long, Carol was a moreover lifeless fixture of the RV troupe, amounting energy only to make sure her young daughter was fed and protected. After the zombie-induced death of Ed, Carol began (slowly) to reinvent herself. Her shackles were unlocked as her tormentor met his demise, allowing a new brand of self-efficacy to enter Carol's bloodstream. But it wasn't until the far more tragic death (also zombie-induced) of Sophia that we saw Carol achieve the sort of liberty for which she is now known.
Bound now by next to nothing, finding fleeting value in anything beyond abject survival, Carol can be seen as one of the "strongest," or at least most self-possessed, human beings on The Walking Dead. While she can marshall compassion and affection for her fellow prison-mates — with Rick and Daryl topping the list — Carol's one remaining love is her resistence to death. She's not caught up in the power struggles that occupy so many of the characters holed up in the penitentiary. In contributing to the safety of the prison, in secretly teaching the children how to take out walkers, in killing Karen and David, Carol affirms her only goal to be practicality.
Never is that affirmation more bold than in "Indifference." In a conversation with two wayward travelers, Carol denies ever having children. She locks herself off from them completely, allowing no pity to be taken in her and Rick's decision to welcome them into the prison. But Carol, like all great characters, is full of s**t.
People matter to her. And she needs to matter to people. Owning up to that would be a fate worse than death, or banishment, as she associates this kind of deep empathy with what anchored her down to her state as a victim back in the days of Ed. It is fitting that Carol mentions Ed for the first time in entire seasons in this episode. She does so sharply, criticizing herself for staying with him for so long. Carol has taken such a firm stance against everything she once was, chastising pre-teen girls for being too weak to handle their fathers' death. She doesn't want to see her former self anywhere, least of all in her current self. But that delicate heart still beats beneath her hardened surface. And we see this in the back half of "Indifference."
We see it when she practically pleads with Rick to acknowledge her murder of Karen and David, to "accept the truth," mere minutes after she told a pair of strangers that she never had a daughter. We see it when she admits her own distaste for the deed but turns around to defend her character by pulling at her connection with Rick. "It's me," she says, desperate for that to have some meaning in the heart of the sheriff. For all the frigidity with which Carol has worked to shroud herself, she remains inside the same human being longing to be loved, approved of, cherished, needed... all the same feelings, we can presume, that kept her bound to Ed through it all.
And so, when Rick rejects that, denying her entry back into the jail or into his heart, we see Carol dealt the worst fate we can imagine for her. Once again, as she was with Ed, Carol led to believe she's "not worth it." And to anyone who is as invested in the character as we are, those tears building in Rick's eyes after their final goodbye sure do ring true.
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Eminem has been crowned the Artist of the Year at the inaugural YouTube Music Awards in New York City. The Berzerk hitmaker reigned supreme on Sunday (03Nov13), as he nabbed the top prize from the popular video sharing site, in a ceremony streamed live on the Internet.
Based on data from the website, Eminem was the most watched, shared, liked, and subscribed-to artist of 2013.
His win came just a day after his appearance as a musical guest on U.S. sketch show Saturday Night Live, and two days before the release of his eighth studio album, The Marshall Mathers LP 2.
Also nabbing awards were Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, who earned the Breakthrough Award, which celebrates the artists with biggest growth in views and subscribers, Korean pop group Girls' Generation for Video of the Year, and Taylor Swift for YouTube Phenomenon, which honoured her hit I Knew You Were Trouble for generating the most fan videos.
The event also included performances by Eminem, Arcade Fire, and Lady Gaga, who debuted a new track titled Dope, from her upcoming album Artpop.
In addition, Vanessa Hudgens and actor Michael Shannon took part in a live music video, which was written by Lena Dunham. The interactive clip allowed audience members to choose the fate of Hudgens and her ex-boyfriend in the final shot, while Avicii's Wake Me Up played in the background.
Actor Jason Schwartzman and comedian Reggie Watts co-hosted the event, while Spike Jonze served as the creative director of the prizegiving.

Ron P. Jaffe/FOX
In middle school, they taught us about plagiarism. I remember taking much surprise in learning that not only was it a violation to reproduce the work of others, but to reproduce your own past work as well. They taught us that regurgitating passages from papers you've turned in previously would result in a failing grade, and the deadly shame of being known as a rule-breaker (that was big for me). Well, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, I do believe you'd earn a ribald F in Mrs. Panthaker's sixth grade English class — the How I Met Your Mother creators might be doing exactly the same shtick with a new developing project: How I Met Your Father.
HuffPo reports that the writers are teaming with Emily Spivey (creator of the production disaster that was Up All Night) to develop the new property, which (and you really don't need us to spell it out for you, but) focuses on a group of friends living in New York City, with the central character — a woman — chronicling the days/years leading up to her union with the eventual father of her children.
If that's not bad enough, MacLaren's Pub is being considered as a fixture of the show. To help better connect the Father world to HIMYM. Because the thematic connections were all too tenuous otherwise.
What's particularly shocking about this option is that we're already getting tired of the story with characters we actually care about. Although this ninth and final season of How I Met Your Mother has exhibited a new breath of life that the show hasn't seen in a while, most audiences have otherwise lost a great deal of investment in an idea that has gone on far too long. To do that whole thing again, and without even the benefits of Neil Patrick Harris, seems like a disaster of That '80s Show caliber.
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CBS
After a deliberately silly but admittedly funny opening segment — in which a low budget Discovery Channel-style documentary chronicles the urban legend of Deerduff the Hooker, the ghost of a murderous pirate who allegedly haunts the Farhampton Inn (more specifically, the room that Marshall specifically chose for his and Lily's stay at the Farhampton Inn) — we return to the How I Met Your Mother gang. But not the gang we saw last week, or this season so far whatsoever. Not the gang with which we've spent the past couple of years, in fact. See, we've faulted How I Met Your Mother for, among other things, losing its luster. Somewhere around Season 7, it seemed like everyone on board was checking out. The writing seemed weak and lazy, and the actors looked bored. With budding movie careers for three of the five stars, HIMYM felt like an afterthought. An obligation. The Rosh Hashanna dinner with Aunt Myrtle that you have to wade through before heading to the lake house for a three-day weekend. But with the finality stamped upon Season 9, some of the old color seems to have rushed back into the show's cheeks. And this week's episode, "No Questions Asked," represents perhaps the biggest rush of energy and wit we've seen in years.
This is still How I Met Your Mother, so you can temper your expectations. At its best, the writing on this show can be called "good fun." But it's nice to see that achieved for the first time in ages, with Marshall (from the open road, in the rig with Daphne) sending Ted, Barney, and Robin on a heist operation to retrieve Lily's cell phone before she reads the text message that reveals his acceptance of the judgeship in New York. The conditions: each of the three (unaware of the others' involvement) must accomplish the mission no questions asked, having each incurred the debt of one "no questions asked" scenario for having asked Marshall the same favor once before (Ted was stuck in a mailbox and pleaded with Marshall to get him out, no questions asked... Barney swallowed several large synethic objects resembling the Lucky Charms cereal shapes and needed Marshall to check him out of the hospital, no questions asked... and Robin, apparently, was being pursued by some kind of leotard-wearing super criminals calling her the Night Hawk and needed Marshall to catch her as she dived from a building roof, no questions asked.
My favorite part about this gag: Marshall is, quite certainly, the one that these imbeciles would call in times of need. Not only is the the handiest (re: Ted's situation), and the strongest (re: Robin's), but also the most forgiving and responsible of the troupe. He's the moral and emotional backbone of the How I Met Your Mother fivesome, so seeing him to be in such dire need of his friends' aid to erase a mistake he has made kind of carries some emotional weight. "I've fallen to your level," he's tacitly admitting. "Please help me." And they do. But of course, they insist, "Down here, you're in our world. And we do things differently."
Naturally, each of Marshall's pals wants to go about apprehending Lily's phone in the most elaborate way possible (climbing up drain pipes, sneaking through vents, hiding in room service carts), while Mrashall insists that they just... use the unlocked door. But with each affirmation, we hear the snarling sociopaths insisting, "No! We do things differently!" So, the gang members attempt to pull off their schemes, each failing miserably until Ted realizes that he has a gold card in his back pocket: he demands that Lily, who herself owes him a no questions asked from that time he helped her break free from the clutches of a gang of unruly schoolchildren, demands she destroy her own phone. Say what you will about these people, but when they make rules, they really abide by them. She breaks the phone, and the message is deleted for ever.
Seconds later, Marshall realizes (through a series of comical flashbacks) that he has never demanded of Lily a no questions asked, always wanting to share everything with her. So, he bites, embraces the value of honesty, ascends from the dark, despondent land in which his friends live, and admits to her through Ted's non-destroyed phone that he accepted the judgeship in New York. She's... pissed. And that's where we end it, setting up for the ultimate Eriksen-Aldrin showdown in the weeks to come.
Meanwhile, Barney and Robin continue to question their compatibility, and continue to offer no confidence either way in their abilities to be together or apart. It's unsettling.
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CBS
I had a decidedly bizarre relationship with this most recent episode of How I Met Your Mother. To begin, I watched the half-hour comedy via the good graces of my DVR (for which I allot a portion of my salary in lieu of breakfasts) at around 3 in the morning, after waking up from a nap I didn't remember deciding to take. In my fugue state, everything hit harder. The jokes (I couldn't help but laugh at every misplaced "What the damn hell?!"), the sentiment, the Indiana Jones references, and the episode's "dark" conclusion. That especially.
See, How I Met Your Mother doesn't exist in the world of It's Always Sunny or Arrested Development or Seinfeld. It exists in a world with a pulsing heart, one that wants us to care about its quirky quintet. It seems too often, though, that the show tries to have its cake and eat it too: to bank on the bounties of black comedy while still riding on a sympathetic undercurrent. We've already come to recognize all of the group's core members (with the possible, and that's being generous, exception of Marshall) as horrible people. Lily goes out of her way to refer to Barney as a sociopath — probably true — in this episode. But when it comes to gags like the conclusive twist in "Knight Vision," we reach a point that's beyond bearable. At least to those of us watching in the hyper-emotional state immediately between two sleeps.
Robin and Barney spend the episode trying to convince their rigid minister that they are worthy of his approval and of his church. So, they use the sweetest, most romantic love story they can conjure up: Marshall and Lily's, the whole "we met in college and have been together ever since" ordeal, adopting their personas (and nicknames, to comical nonsensicality — the stern minister fawning over monikers like "Barnmallow" and "Robinpad" earned a good laugh) in place of their own far more... colorful... personal history.
When Lily's intrusion sparks the revelation that Robin and Barney swiped the story, they lose the minister's approval, and a place in his church. But the pair realizes that they prefer their true story — a story of deceit, heartbreak, lechery, adultery, and various other sorts of undesirable behavior — launching into a vivid recollection of the past nine years they have spent together. The shock of their narrative actually kills the minister, leaving them in want of a new official to oversee the wedding.
Theory: Don't Robin and Barney have a friend who is struggling with the decision to become a judge? Perhaps this new position is the answer to our question of what Marshall and Lily will ultimately decide to do (move to Rome for her career vs. stay in New York for his).
And so, while Robin and Barney sulk over having to find a new minister at the last minute, we cringe at their unintentional hand in the death of this man. It's the sort of thing that should haunt you, one would think, not just serve as a plot device. While this sort of black humor might feel right at home in Sunny or its dark brethren, HIMYM needs to make up its mind on where it wants to lie. It's a rare achievement for a show to manage such sinister comedy and still earn our "aww"s. And since How I Met Your Mother is certainly more concerned with the latter, it should really steer clear of gags like these.
Meanwhile, Ted tries to sleep with Anna Camp. He doesn't. But don't worry. The Mother is coming soon.
Footnote: In the sleep to follow my viewing of this episode, I had a How I Met Your Mother-themed dream. In it, Barney kissed Ted, tearfully professing his undying love for him and his long-guarded homosexuality. It was very moving, and very exciting. I was disappointed to wake up to realize this never actually happened.
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CBS
We can take solace in one thing: it seems like this might have been How I Met Your Mother's send-off to the Bro Code — the most reprehensibly irritating running element in the show's nine season history. After last week's abrupt revelation that Barney was angry with Ted for having rushed to Robin's aid in the park last season (during that whole buried locket debacle), Season 9's fourth episode attacks the tarnished relationship between the two best pals with a painfully insistent presence of the Bro Code, Barney's set of guidelines for loyal, egregiously chauvinistic friendship.
At first, Ted challenges Barney's citation of the code in his castigation of Ted for his inappropriate attentiveness to Robin, but in an ultimate admission of guilt over what might be misplaced intentions with Robin, Ted succumbs to his pal's pseudo-religion in order to make things right. Placing such a great focus on the Code, and capping its story with an ultimate reversal of attitudes about its validity — with Ted finally embracing the Code and Barney, in coming to terms with the fact that he's not so much angry with Ted as he is disappointed in himself for not being the one who was there for Robin, dismissing it as stupid — the episode does indeed look like it might be How I Met Your Mother's way of finally breaking its worst habit.
In addition to its retirement of the obnoxious gag, the episode also trucks slowly along the plotline of Ted realizing that he might never be over Robin. And although we know his future wife is right around the corner, we wonder if these longstanding, overpowering, unconditional, clinically alarming feelings for his best friend's fiancée can ever be put behind him.
It is unlikely that Ted will ever have a normal, healthy platonic friendship with Robin, or that the Cristin Milioti to whom he is destined can ever approach their rapport without even a lingering paranoia. On this token, we don't know for sure that the relationship to follow their union will be an entirely happy one. Maybe Future Ted is so fixated on recounting the days of yore because his present life is jagged and loveless, his heart still beating only for Robin. It might be someething he can never truly get rid of.
But at least he got rid of something else this week: the Bro Code. That horrible, horrible, viciously unfunny Bro Code. Goodbye, you dead weight material.
Footnote: Barney (and the How I Met Your Mother writers) appears to think Christopher Columbus arrived at the Americas in 1776. That is not accurate.
More:'How I Met Your Mother' Still Has Its HeartWill 'HIMYM' End in a Nightmare?'How I Met Your Mother': The Wedding Season
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From Our PartnersStars Pose Naked for 'Allure' (Celebuzz)20 Grisliest TV Deaths of 2012-2013 (Vulture)

The parents of Johnny Lewis have filed court papers to divide the tragic actor's estate following his death last year (12). The former Sons of Anarchy star accidentally plunged to his death in September, 2012, following a fight with his elderly landlady, Catherine Davis, who police believe he killed at her home in Los Angeles.
The 28 year old's possessions have since been valued at $41,000 (£27,330) and his mum Divona and dad Michael have filed documents in Los Angeles County Superior Court to settle his estate, because he died without writing a will, reports TMZ.com.
The Lewis' believe they are the sole beneficiaries, although reports suggest the actor may have fathered a child with one-time Sons of Anarchy co-star Diane Marshall-Green - the actress and her three year old have been listed as possible beneficiaries.
Marshall-Green has yet to comment on the claims.

CBS
It's always a little disarming — and more than a little embarrassing, if you're in the company of friends — when a show like How I Met Your Mother makes you tear up. But if in the same half hour of television viewing, you witness hordes of geriatrics swarming like zombies hungry for any mention of Mandy Patinkin and tremble over a heartwarming speech delivered by a woman concerned for her longtime friend's happiness, you've got a pretty good program on your hands. Now, we're likely all in the boat that HIMYM has been running steamless for the past few years. But three episodes in, Season 9 seems to have a little more pep than we've come to expect. Not quite early era pep, but definitely enough to remind us of the show we loved way back when. It's been funnier, livelier, and — as proven by the final moments of this week's ep, "Last Time in New York," even more emotional.
And as has always been the case with How I Met Your Mother, the real meaty emotional moment didn't occur between two lovers. Yes, we feel for Ted when he professes to Robin that he loves her. We're impressed when Robin and Barney showcase their mutual affection despite a ganglion of self-destructive behaviors. But the best, most tearful instances in the show's history have been entirely platonic. I particularly love when Lily, who has grown on me quite a bit since her days of hyper-manipulation, doles out some compassionate advice to her dimwitted chums. In the latest ep, the recipient is Ted, who has vowed to leave New York for good after Robin and Barney tie the knot.
While its present day resonance might pale in comparison to that of days past, what How I Met Your Mother has done consistently well is keep us believing that these people are and should be friends. Ted and Marshall make sense as friends who would have hit it off in college and stayed close throughout the years. Barney is the sort of person who'd attach himself to a guy like Ted and keep his haunches embedded in the marginally cool and intelligent but ostensibly non-threatening, reliable average Joe. And it makes sense that within this beehive of nincompoops, that Lily would serve as confidant for the sadder members of the troupe. Sometimes it's Barney. Occasionally it's Robin. Most often, it's Ted. And thanks to their mutually somber vantage points (a fact that is highlighted in partnership with their tangible bond taking the form of Marshall, the most merry and humanistic of the group by far) and long history together, Ted and Lily have a realistic, meaningful relationship. One that really pays off in moments like the ending of "Last Time in New York."
Lily begins by spelling out all of the reasons she doesn't think Ted should leave, but settles (seeing the misery in the eyes of her friend) on just insisting that he leave on the best terms possible, growing misty herself at the thought of her pal departing with such heartbreak in tow. It's a genuine moment, the likes of which we recall from the earlier seasons, but that is even stronger now thanks to our own extended investment in these people (and nostalgia for their better days).
So sure, How I Met Your Mother might not consistently manage the wit and oomph of its first few years, but it still has shines of the heart we fell in love with way back when we realized this was more than just a goofy show about a guy who liked a girl he met in a bar. Bravo, HIMYM. Bravo, Lily.
More:How Will 'How I Met Your Mother' End?'How I Met Your Mother': The Wedding Season'HIMYM' Season Finale Recap: OH MY GOD, IT'S HER!
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From Our PartnersStars Pose Naked for 'Allure' (Celebuzz)20 Grisliest TV Deaths of 2012-2013 (Vulture)